Gurpreet Chana Tabla Master

by Mohamad

If you or I had been found banging dents in the coffee table when we were three years old, dada abba would have given us jutiyaan for lunch. Kesar Singh Chana gave his grandson Gurpreet a set of premium quality Gerrard Street tablas. Twenty years later, Gurpreet Singh Chana gained the opportunity to do his thing at the 2000 Midwest Bhangra Competition before a panel of judges – including Bally Sagoo. Sitting across from me at a table at the Indigo Café, Gurpreet looks as though he still hasn’t gotten over the outcome of his performance that night.

“I’d be lying if I said I don’t want to be famous.” But, with a beaming face, the modest twenty-something sardarji insists that when he’s drumming his fingers over a pair of taut skins, he doesn’t waste his time daydreaming about record deals. “While I’m playing the tabla, all I know is that I’m having the time of my life.”

On the night of the competition, as always, he began with a classical piece – his way of showing respect and paying tribute to the Hindustani tradition. Halfway through, however, it had become an Eastern-Western fusion session, with Gurpreet playing his tablas over a track called “Nightmare” by Brainbug. In fact, he wasn’t even competing for the $2000 dollar price, but was merely there as a “special act”. When it came time for the awards to be presented, special guest Bally Sagoo announced that the $2K would go to the team from U of T (as in Texas). And, by the way, “I’m going to sign the tabla player.”

Gurpreet and Bally met up in Birmingham over the summer, just as Ishq Records’ newest release from Kenz Desai was being completed. Taken from Kenz’s debut project on Ishq, Bootlegged, the Hai Hai single, featuring vocals by Satwinder Bitty and remixes by Pink Bomb and Simon Storer, was having the finishing touches put on it. The CD needed to be finished by the next morning; nevertheless, Bally asked Gurpreet whether he could do anything with Simon Storer’s “Triple Time Mix” of “Hai Hai”. The two worked from 12:00 to 5:00AM to produce the “Triple Time Tablastic Mix”, a version incorporating the added audio spectacle of Gurpreet’s tabla rhythms enmeshing themselves between and atop Storer’s original beats. The single was released three weeks later, and is now available at Ishq Records’ website.

The gurdwara in Hamilton was where Gurpreet got his start, accompanying his sister Harpreet's vocals and harmonium in shabads, along with his younger brother, Harjit, also a tabla player. The religious aspect of performance is still with him, and he thanks Wahe Guru for getting him where he is today. The Waterloo grad has played around the university and at Sitaron Ki Mehfil at Western, as well as in Toronto, for the Kesri Ribbon Project, Canadian World Youth, Desh Pardesh and the Royal Ontario Museum. Everywhere he goes, his friends applaud like paagal khana inmates. Not surprisingly, Gurpreet is thankful to them as well.

He also gives a great deal of credit to his ustad ji, Professor Parshotam Singh, whose fourteen years of guidance have enabled him to become familiar with his instrument in depth, and to appreciate both the traditional and the creative aspects of the art. Instructed in the Punjabi gharana or school of the Hindustani discipline, he regards Indian classical music as the basis of all of the popular genres that his friends enjoy, from bhangra to filmi to mainstream Desi music.

After one of his performances, he was hotly accused backstage of imitating another tabla player by the name of Talvin Singh. As flattering as he finds the comparison, for Gurpreet, it’s not about biting other people’s styles; he believes in simply “playing what your hands are saying,” as he was taught. What he does is as much about improvisation and artistic expression as it is about tradition. In addition to classical hand patterns, eloquent spontaneity is required in good measure in order to play an instrument often described as a “talking drum”. It’s not something he thinks about. It’s something he feels.

Watch out for Gurpreet at the next Funkasia (see the Events Calendar for details), where he’ll be playing a live tabla set with DJ Zahra.